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Posted July 13, 2013 09:28 pm - Updated July 13, 2013 09:29 pm

Mark Woods: I'm all in for Fulham Football Club

I’m a Fulham Football Club fan. Going all the way back to Wednesday.

The news that Jaguars owner Shad Khan might buy the English Premier League soccer team, giving him pieces of two of the biggest sports leagues in the world, predictably set off panic in Jacksonville. Some saw it as the first step in a Jaguar move to London. I don’t. I see this being another step in a transatlantic relationship that can be good for Jacksonville sports, business, tourism, etc.

But that’s not why I’m rooting for Fulham FC.

To start with, it has Craven Cottage. Best sports stadium name ever. And fitting. I love storied, intimate venues, and Craven Cottage makes some of our iconic ones — places like Fenway Park and Lambeau Field — seem like new palaces. The Cottage seats 25,700 and it has been Fulham’s home since ’96 — 1896, that is.

It has had cheerleaders known as the Cravenettes and a mascot known as “Sir Craven of Cottage.” (Even better, Sir Craven disappeared soon after he was unveiled at a home match and, according to one newspaper, “the sound of laughter emanating from 25,000 people greeted the brave knight.”)

It has a history of embracing American players, which helps explain why Fulham USA can boast more than 2,000 members.

No, Fulham doesn’t have Tim Tebow. But for those who like some religion mixed with their sports consider this: The team was founded in 1879 as Fulham St. Andrew’s Church Sunday School Football Club.

Team nicknames include the Cottagers and the Whites. The latter is because of a simple, consistent uniform. White shirts, black shorts, for more than a century.

Fulham recently unveiled a new uniform — white shirts with black trim — along with an Adidas slogan that sounds familiar: All In. (For conspiracy theorists, there it is. The Cottagers, like the Jaguars, are All In.)

Google the words “a proper football club.” You’ll find a video Fulham made a few years ago with old footage and a voiceover recalling how it used to be. How teams and players cared about fans. How it was important to win the right way. How everything changed with money and TV. Except at Fulham, it says.

This is a different kind of club, it says, one where a player once was chosen the team’s “man of the match” after spending the entire game on the bench — because the 11 on the field had played so poorly.

It ends simply with the voiceover saying: “Fulham Football Club, doing the right thing.”

I don’t know how much of this is P.R. bluster. But even if it is, can you imagine any team in the NFL — a league that has carefully fostered a rebellious, black-shirt, just-win-baby image — marketing itself this way? A proper club, doing the right thing?